


The Chaconne

by just_about_nothing



Series: A Badly Broken Code [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Cigarettes, Drug Use, Female Character of Color, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kinda, Music, Other, POV Second Person, References to Drugs, Smoking, Songfic, Tags Are Hard, Violins, i'll fight you, rich people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8403679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_about_nothing/pseuds/just_about_nothing
Summary: Chaconne- a composition in a series of varying sections in slow triple time, typically over a short repeated bass theme.  "We packed together, your suits, your papers, and typewriter. I pulled your violin case out and handed it to you. You told me that you were going study psychology, not music. When we were done, I stepped outside for a cigarette, a habit I’d picked up at the public school I attended. You glared at me and said that you weren’t going to defend me to your parents. I shrugged and said that I could handle myself. You kissed me, despite my smoker’s breath. I kissed back, despite my better judgment. When we separated, your eyes were damp. I took a drag on my cigarette and smiled."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based off "The Chaconne" by Dessa (copyright DTR 2010). Listen to it [ here ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4-N3ZT9Zrs)

_Now the bough breaks_

 

I first saw you because of my mother, the woman you considered more important than your own until you turned twelve. She sung “Rock a bye Baby” into your cradle. I peered in and asked her why you were so small. She told me that you were younger than me, that I needed to be quiet so as not to wake you. You woke up at the end of the lullaby and began crying. You were no more than two, and the image of a baby dying scared you.

 

_The books I read/ Said you were a fragile kid/ Just as I imagined it/ Your story goes: Another nosebleed/ Roses on the pillowcase/ The fever breaks/ And you're back on earth again_

 

I was always in and out of your household. Things changed later, after my mother stopped working for your parents. But, as a kid, I could see you grow up. My mother told me, when I next saw you, at the age of five, that you were ill, that I couldn’t disturb you. I did anyway. I walked straight into your room, not caring about the blood on the sheets from the cuts on your arm. (It was only later, after I’d noticed that you only wore long sleeves that I wondered.) Not caring about the way you were coughing so hard you couldn’t speak. I sat on your bed, a little gap toothed seven year old, and started to tell you about my life. You started laughing, so hard I thought you would die, when I told you about my cat’s mouse. She never ate the thing, just played with it until it ran away. Then she found another one.

 

My mother was alerted that someone was in your room by the noises you made. She ran up three flights of stairs, and one long hallway, to find her charge with her daughter, both laughing their heads off. You waved her away with your hand and I, stunned, stopped laughing. My mother was the ultimate form of authority for me. You waved her off like she was a servant. Which she _was_ , but I hadn’t put two and two together.

 

You leaned towards me, in a conspiring way, after my mother left, and asked me to tell you more about my cat. I nodded and launched into another story about her antics. (You held me when she died and let me cry into your dress suit.) 

 

_You rehearse/ In the living room/ The nursemaid comes mid-afternoon/ To say "you've practiced long enough today"_

 

You were in love with your violin. Playing it was never your strength, though as with everything you did, you could have played it professionally. You were seven when you took it up. I was nine and thought I knew something about music. I told you about the chaconne and you became obsessed with _that_ form. I couldn’t blame you. I still think the chaconne is the most perfect of all forms. (Perhaps because of you.) My mother hated your violin. I never knew why and was too scared to ask. Certainly, it wasn’t the music you were playing. I knew she never expressed her feelings towards your violin to you. You would have been crushed. Like me, you sought her approval in everything. 

 

You played in the sitting room, which was never used during the day. Your tutors were gone by mid-afternoon, when my mother and I would arrive at your house. You never noticed when I entered the room. I’d pad into the room and sit on the big maroon armchair by the unlit fireplace and watch you play. You moved around the room, this tiny, slender boy with big brown eyes and straight black hair, almost dancing with instrument in hand. You never dressed, even then, the way your parents wanted. You’d throw off the cords and cardigans in favor of black suits. You were a black figure dancing through a room of auburns, mahoganies, maroons, golds. I can still see you, your eyes shut through the more familiar pieces, glaring at sheet music through the unknown ones, annoyed at being grounded to one place. 

 

You noticed me after a while, greeted me with a shout. We embraced and told each other about our day, in one big messy SOMETHING. We were still comfortable enough with each other to do so.

 

_She takes your bow/ It's suppertime/ But oh, your only appetite/ Was fixed on the chaconne you'd hoped to play_

 

You could never eat after you played. I think that’s one of the many reasons my mother hated your violin. She hated that she couldn’t get you to eat. That she’d failed as your nursemaid. If I was joining you at dinnertime, you’d eat a little. When you were nine, my mother asked your parents if I could begin eating with you. According to you, they said yes without even asking who I was. (They found out later, despite their apathy.) From then on, I ate with you every night, barring the nights that I was ill, or my mother was. You were still getting sick with some regularity, but it was nothing like it had been. Your cooks would make feasts for us and you’d eat bits and pieces. I’d eat until I felt queasy, then pack what we didn’t eat up into containers and give it all to my siblings. Despite what your family could have done for us, they did nothing. 

 

_So soon you're off/ To the academy/ The honors/ And the accolades_

 

You left for school — university — when I was seventeen and you were fifteen. I thought you were too young and told you so. You laughed in my face and said not to worry, that you’d be fine. Nothing, you said, could be harder than what my mother forced you to do. I glared at you before we both burst into laughter. We packed together, your suits, your papers, and typewriter. I pulled your violin case out and handed it to you. You told me that you were going study psychology, not music. I raised my eyebrow and you offered me a small, meek smile. (You later told me that I reminded you of my mother when I made that face.) You brought the violin anyway. When we were done, I stepped outside for a cigarette, a habit I’d picked up at the public school I attended. You glared at me and said that you weren’t going to defend me to your parents. I shrugged and said that I could handle myself. You kissed me, despite my smoker’s breath. I kissed back, despite my better judgment. When we separated, your eyes were damp. I took a drag on my cigarette and smiled. 

 

Later, I received a letter from you that your studies were going well and that you missed me. Your postscript said that you’d figured out which brand I smoked and that your new girlfriend smoked the same ones. I wrote back asking about your personal life and telling you about mine. Your next letter said that you were glad I was happy, told me about your academic achievements. You ignored my questions. 

 

_First a darling/ Then a marvel/ When we met/ I was still a young girl_

 

When I next saw you, over your Christmas break, for the first time we’d had to schedule something. My mother was no longer working for your parents and my family was tight on money. My Christmas present to you was a box of silk ties belonging to my runaway father. You wore them until you got married. Your gift to me was telling me that you’d broken up with your girlfriend. We spend Christmas Eve in your bedroom, talking and fucking. You told me, right before midnight, that you’d never liked the verb fucking. I laughed, my voice already affected by the smoking. You kissed me and handed me a pack of cigarettes. I kissed you back and we fell asleep in each other’s arms. 

 

Christmas morning, your parents came in, and saw us together. Heaven knows what they thought. Certainly not that their son was with his former nursemaid’s daughter. I was invited down to breakfast and for gifts. I whispered in your ear, after your parents left, that they might have been infantilizing you just a little. You smacked me lightly and we kissed again. When we came down, you in a suit, me in my only dress (I kept it in the back of your closet), they were kind to me. More kind than they should have been, given that you were still fifteen and I’d turned eighteen that November. I don’t think they knew.

 

The next time I saw you, it was over the summer, and too brief. We spent three days together, just enough time for me to tell you that I’d been accepted into your university. 

 

_But you had changed, already famous/Your name was a contagion/ You were vain and hard to take/ All the same, I was brazen_

 

When I first walked onto your campus, I thought it would be hard to find you. Surely you’d be relatively unknown, locked up in some classroom. I didn’t expect you to be playing Bach’s chaconne for a large audience on your violin. They were silent and I pushed through the crowd, wearing a t-shirt that said _Puta_ on it. You were wearing a suit, gray, and your eyes were closed. You were dancing, as you did when you were nine. I had an unlit cigarette dangling out of the side of my mouth. You were a beautiful seventeen year old and “undamaged”. I was almost nineteen and had a sleeve of tattoos, a nicotine addiction, and bruises from my mother. I turned to go, but you finished and grabbed my sleeve. You looked at me and said you were glad I had made you bring your violin. I laughed and you brushed my shoulder, where fresh bruises bloomed. I tried to not wince. You led me away from the crowd, all of whom seemed to know you. Some older girl tucked a rose and a twenty into your back pocket. I pretended to ignore it. 

 

Away from everyone, you pushed up my shirt sleeve, ignoring my hiss of pain. You saw the pretty purple color and the greens next to it. You put two and two together — you always were smart — and kissed me, gently, softly. I kissed back, not caring that you were younger and this was illegal. 

 

You led me around, introduced me to your professors, your friends, preening under praise. I heard things, after, that I was your dumb sister, that I was a maneater, ready to break the people’s little darling in two, that you felt sorry for me. We made quite a pair, you and I. You in your suits, me in t-shirts that swore at the world in Spanish. You could worm your way into anything with a charming smile and your wide, open eyes. I was generally distrusted by everyone. 

 

_How the tides rise_

 

The years passed and what we were became apparent one night when I had too much to drink with people that weren’t your friends. You were eighteen, I was one day past twenty-one. No real harm should have come of it but they hated you. You told me straight up that we were not going to work out, not now, not ever, not with what you thought I was doing. I smoked incessantly, two, three packs a day, for months after you told me. 

 

_I don't suppose you'd tell the truth/ So I won't ask you anymore/ All the things that we do/ To pass the time between the wars_

 

When you graduated, I attended the ceremony. It was too much to hope that you wouldn’t notice me. You slapped me hard, across the face. I sucked down the rest of my cigarette and pretended that I didn’t care. I could see that you were still mad, but I didn’t know why. That night, you broke into my apartment and we had sex. You whispered in my ear that I’d changed my brand of cigarettes and you liked the old one better. I was perversely reminded of that Christmas when you were fifteen. 

 

At my graduation, you were absent. I didn’t try to find out where you’d gone. Nonetheless, you turned up in my new apartment that night, rummaging through my cupboards. I asked you what you were looking for and you said whiskey. I told you I didn’t have any, leaving out that I wished that you’d been at the ceremony. You shrugged, asked if I had anything hard. I told you that I’d stopped drinking a year earlier. You looked at me with steely eyes and told me that you weren’t asking about the whiskey. 

 

_I don't regret a single day/ Heard your chaconne on every stage/ But your love sleeps in a velvet case/ So what'd you bring me for? / What'd you bring me for?_

 

I started working for your father’s company, feeling that my whole life had been bitterly ironic and it would be proper to continue the trend. I saw you a few times, stalking through the halls. You didn’t see me (or at least pretended not to see me). No one else knew that you played the violin and I didn’t see the need to tell them. 

 

I saw you on a street corner dressed the way a rich boy might think that a busker dressed. You were playing your violin and people were throwing coins, roses, bills, into your case. I didn’t see the need to tell them that you had a job and a sizeable inheritance. I stood in the back of the crowd, my tattoos covered and it struck me you’d been in pain for as long as we had known each other. 

 

I found out where you lived, found out that you were doing what you thought I had been doing. What you broke up with me for supposedly doing. I rolled you onto your side and and sat next to you that night. You never noticed. I didn’t see a need to tell your father.

 

_I hear you keep your pretty wife alive/ On only brie/ They say a dozen years ago/ She could have passed for me_

 

You married a woman much younger -- ten years -- than yourself. I was high enough in the company that used to be your father’s to see the wife of the man running it. I looked at her and saw myself, age twenty-five. I wondered what game you were playing. (Or if you were playing any game at all.) She never looked at you throughout the course of the party we were all attending. I knew what was going on. You hadn’t stopped. I wondered if she rolled you over at night so you didn’t choke. Your sleeves were rolled up and I saw those old scars but no other marks. I wondered how long it had all been going on. 

 

Your wife and I became friends and we talked about you. She asked what you were like before. I wanted to know what you were like now. She knew that you never really loved her. I think she was all right with that knowledge. She confirmed my suspicions and told me more than I wanted to know. We met in your parents’ old house, yours now. She used the sitting room more than your parents did, and I tried not to think about you and your violin. She showed it to me, the same instrument that you’d had all of your life. Inside the case was your kit, which made me ill. I asked her what we could do about it and she shook her head. You never saw me when I was there. 

 

_She doesn't trust you with the baby/ Maybe better that way/ Safe in your study/ Going grey_

 

You got her pregnant, the same way you did me. The only difference is that I got an abortion before the baby could come, before you even knew about it. She told me that you weren’t allowed to pick up her daughter. I nodded, without needing her to explain. She told me that you stayed in your room the whole day, sending sheets of paper out for her to give to the company. She told me that during the middle of the night, she’d heard strains of violin, Bach, she thought. Then, she told me, silence. She told me that she hadn’t seen you in three months. You never left your room, she said. I asked her which one and she named your childhood room, the one in which you spent years one through five. I never found out if they got the stains out of the sheets up there. 

 

_You're at your best/ When you're alone/ Above the fray/ With your chaconne_

 

I visited you one day, without your wife’s knowledge. You had a needle in hand and didn’t see or hear me enter. I sunk down by the doorframe and wondered how we had gotten here. You stuck yourself between your toes, like I’d seen so many other addicts do, and, just like all those other times, I did nothing. I saw your violin case open, with the tourniquet around your ankle and the case for your kit lying next to you on the floor. You undid the tourniquet and fell back, eagle armed. Your eyes were open, the same deep brown that I knew from before. I rolled you over onto a pillow and sat next to you. Hours passed. I heard your wife downstairs with her daughter, cooing over her, feeding her. I sat next to you. Hours passed. Your wife went into a bedroom and night fell. Her daughter started crying and was soothed. You began to wake up, snapping out of your haze. The first thing you saw was me. The first thing you said to me, the first thing that you’d said to me in years, was a question: “Am I dead?”

 

_Now the bells toll_

 

Your wife divorced you, took her daughter with her. I put you into a rehabilitation program. You resisted treatment for a long time until I started to visit you. You gave me your company and asked me to marry you. I didn’t respond for months, during which you left the program. I said no, but continued to live in your house. You asked why and I said that you couldn’t have everything you wanted. Your ex-wife’s daughter comes by sometimes. She can’t play the violin to save her life and none of us want to hear her try. She is getting quite good at drumming. Both of us take that as a good sign. 

 

You crawled into bed with me last night, not for sex, but for warmth. I let you. Perhaps I’ll see you again tonight.


End file.
